A bright indistinguishable light that emitted another object, and then both disappeared.

This evening (December 3, 2011) around 10:15-10:20p.m. (2215-2220). me and my friend were driving when he notices a bright light, almost the color of a streetlight, but more red. The object we saw had no distinguishable features, it was just bright. I then pulled over and we watched it for about 3-6 minutes. We were facing East/Southeast at this time. The light was heading north towards our location and the veered east and appeared to stop in mid air. It then reversed its heading and went back to where it made its initial turn. It then just stayed there. During this time I had rolled down my window and there was no sound, neither propeller or jet. The object then appeared to be getting dim, losing about half of its brightness. Then all of the sudden something (it was to undistinguishable for us to tell if it had broken off, or was some part of the craft) came off of the craft going straight down towards earth. This new object was the same color as the origin! al object but looked like a mortar being shot on the 4th of July but about half way down it completely disappeared. Then about 3-5 seconds later, the original object disappeared as well. We stayed and watched for about a minute longer, but nothing more happened.

We don't know how to explain this. The object was slowly moving and making irregular turns and stops in mid air. My head was out the window, and there was no sound that would come from an aircraft, there was no plane in sight. This was also a cloudy night with no visible stars, or known aircraft. The object was brighter than any star and much larger. We would really like to be contacted by an investigator that could possibly help explain what we saw, because we're at a loss.